


Ineffable

by LiveAndLetRain (CaraLee)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Good Omens Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28472469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaraLee/pseuds/LiveAndLetRain
Summary: It's a familiar story; an angel, a demon, and a boy who would be the antichrist.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48
Collections: KakaIru Zine: Intertwined





	Ineffable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caped-Ace (PsychopompSentinel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychopompSentinel/gifts).



They first meet outside Tanzaku Gai. Kakashi has just finished his work, the hounds circling, stained with blood and soot. They stand together on a mountainside overlooking the remains of the buildings below them, silent.

There is a flutter of wings and a whiff of brimstone carried on the wind, not from the burning human city but from the mountain. And then Kakashi and his hounds are no longer alone on the rocks.

“That seems a little excessive.”

Kakashi tenses, his hounds echoing him. Ready to take action alongside him if need be. This demon doesn’t feel like much of anything special, but deception is a standard trick of theirs. It makes accurately judging power levels difficult at times. “It was needed.”

Singed black wings beat slowly beside him before settling out of this plane of existence, though he can still feel them. The demon attached to them turns to face him, the scar on the face of his corporeal form somewhat startling, though it is perhaps one of the mildest marks Kakashi has seen on the fallen. “Was it?”

Kakashi turns away, returning to his vigil over the burning city. “They neglected their duties to those around them. The neighbors who relied on them. Choosing their own leisure and pleasure over the well-being of others.”

The demon does not say anything else, but they stand together side by side on the mountain.  
  


* * *

  
His name is Iruka and he is annoying.

Kakashi had not expected to see him again, but barely a handful of centuries had passed before he found himself face to face with a being he has not been able to forget since their first meeting at a place of judgment. 

And they meet again.

And again.

“If anyone asks,” Iruka says eventually, casual in a way that few dare be with Kakashi. “I am a devious trickster that requires your specialized skills to keep at bay. Recalling you to Heaven would be a mistake.”

Kakashi blinks. Iruka is devious yes, as all fiends are, and possesses a particular sort of cunning that renders his temptations exceptionally effective when he cares to apply them. Which is not very often, or not so often as Kakashi would think that he would. But he is not notable in the grand scheme of things. Not really. A minor piece in the Ineffable Plan. “Why would I say so?”

There is something desperate in Iruka’s eyes when he meets Kakashi’s. “Because it is the same thing I tell Them about you.”

One of the hounds snuffles and noses Iruka’s hand. 

Well. If Iruka wishes to portray himself as the appointed foe to the Angel of Death, who is Kakashi to stop him.  
  


* * *

  
And if he dispatches the fiends that Hell does attempt to replace Iruka with once or twice quickly and efficiently, that is his business.  
  


* * *

  
Things are...not comfortable, but easy between them. Thousands of years spent on Earth lend themselves to a sense of familiarity, even if they do not actually see each other more than a handful of times a decade. And Iruka has been mostly silent lately. Kakashi has spent most of his time learning new recipes to cook and walking the hounds through the neighboring park. Even if Pakkun has to be dragged most days, embracing his disguise of lazy pug with perhaps too much enthusiasm.

Iruka has never bothered him at home before.

The knock on the door is somewhat startling.

He barely opens it before the demon is pushing past him, a basket clutched close to his chest. “I didn’t know where else to go,” he is babbling before Kakashi has even closed the door. More frantic than Kakashi has ever seen him. “I couldn’t just _let_ it happen. I’m not...The apocalypse…It _can’t_ be time!”

Kakashi stares. “What?”

Iruka flips the lid of the basket open, wild-eyed.

There is a baby inside. 

“I think I stole the Antichrist?”

Kakashi’s initial impulse is to manifest his flaming sword and plunge it through the center of the basket. It is an impulse he does not so much as twitch to fulfill, and he banishes his own questions about it from his mind. Why would he destroy the Antichrist? A symbol that the Ineffable Plan is coming towards its appointed conclusion? An end to the war on Earth. 

His second impulse is to make tea.

Iruka refuses to completely release the basket and cradles his teacup in one hand, the other still clutching the wicker handle, his gaze fixed on the infernal infant slumbering within. 

Kakashi does not have much experience with babies, admittedly, but he would have thought the Antichrist would seem less...peaceful. 

“You have to return it.”

Iruka startles and shakes his head almost immediately. “I can’t. I don’t-If the Apocalypse happens the world will end. And if the Main Office finds out I took him I’ll be discorporated on the spot. Or worse. And both the other babies are already gone with the families—”

“Other babies?”

He shakes his head. “It’s not important. As far as the Main Office knows, and Heaven too, I suppose, the Antichrist has been safely delivered into the arms of the wife of the Kiri Ambassador to Konoha.”

An Ambassador. Kakashi supposes that makes sense.

“So swap them out. They’re babies, they all look the same.”

The Antichrist stirs in its basket and both Kakashi and Iruka freeze until it settles.

“Don’t you see?” Iruka leans in closer, speaking more softly now but no less urgently. “This is our _chance?_ ”

“Chance for what?”

“To keep the Apocalypse from happening.”

Kakashi straightens, focus firmly fixed on the demon sitting at his table. “Keep the Apocalypse from happening.” Even repeating it feels blasphemous.

Iruka nods, intent and sharp, dark eyes glittering. If Kakashi looked into the other plane he’s sure his wing-feathers would be bristling with intent. “The Apocalypse is the end of the world right, the great battle between Heaven and Hell that destroys the Earth.”

Kakashi nods, feeling the metaphysical weight of his sword at his side.

“Which means that once it's done, whatever way it goes, all this,” Iruka gestures at Kakashi’s kitchen. “Will be gone. No more Earth. No more cooking or dog parks. No more romance novels.” Kakashi resists the urge to step protectively in front of his bookshelf. 

“But think about it! The apocalypse cannot begin without the antichrist to usher in the horsemen. What if...What if the antichrist _wasn’t_ evil. What if he just _didn’t_.”

Kakashi has never felt the urge to uncover his eye so strongly. “Are you suggesting that we teach the antichrist to be _good_.”

Iruka shrugs, but there is a glint in his eyes now that Kakashi recognizes from every time he lays down a nearly irresistible temptation in front of a target. “Not good. Neutral. Equally influenced towards both sides, and thus, aligned with neither.”

“You can’t stop the Ineffable Plan,” Kakashi says, but he’s grasping at straws. Iruka has already won and he knows it. “It’s Ineffable. That’s the whole point. What is meant to be will be.”

Iruka nudges the basket a little further onto the table. Akino leans up to sniff at it.

“What have we got to lose?”  
  


* * *

  
Kakashi moves.

Iruka miracles them a little house on the edge of a nearby small village and Kakashi miracles his collection of material belongings into new locations inside. Iruka brings a few things of his own but mostly seems determined to make a perfect nursery for the antichrist.

The baby. That they are now raising.

Kakashi doesn’t have the slightest idea about how to keep a baby alive.

He miracles some copies of a few parenting books he sees in the local bookstore. (And also the latest release in the Makeout series.)  
  


* * *

  
Iruka bans his book collection.

Kakashi miracles it back.  
  


* * *

  
“You need to eat your vegetables, Naruto.” Kakashi had not realized that there were so many new types of tiredness he had left to experience in his indefinable existence. “They are good for you.”

“Ramen is better,” Iruka says, not even bothering to put any effort into the temptation.

Not that any is needed.  
  


* * *

  
“Hey, Iruka!” Naruto stomps in through the front door, tracking mud and bits of grass across the kitchen floor, ignoring Kakashi’s warning look. “I found a dog, can I please keep him? His name is Kurama!”

Kakashi glances down at the small, red-brown bundle of fur trotting at Naruto’s heels and his habitual breathing stops. It looks like a dog. (It looks almost more like a fox actually.)

It is no more a dog than Kakashi’s hounds. (Just in the other direction.)

He doesn’t have to look at him to know that Iruka sees it too.

Time is up.

* * *

  
It is later, after Heaven and Hell and the Apocalypse That Wasn’t, that Kakashi and Iruka are able to actually, finally, talk. 

Naruto is downstairs, clattering around in the living room, probably on the phone with Sakura or Shikamaru or Sasuke, as if they hadn’t just stopped the end of the world together mere days ago. As if they had not upset the delicate balance that has been so precariously maintained by the cosmos for the past thirteen years.

They’re in Iruka’s bedroom because the hounds have taken over Kakashi’s and he really doesn’t want eavesdroppers right now. The door closes behind him and the silence that fills the room around him presses in on his physical body almost tangibly. 

He realizes that he doesn’t know what to say and so they stand there, Kakashi with his back to the door and Iruka with his to the window, just looking at each other in a silence that should probably be more awkward and less companionable than it feels.

“It was colder than I remembered,” Iruka breaks the silence, voice quieter than his usual. “Heaven I mean.”

It’s the first time Kakashi has ever heard Iruka acknowledge his fall outside of their more spiteful arguments or when they’ve both miracled themselves drunk. He doesn’t really know how to respond to that. “I imagine it warmed up some when they brought the hellfire out.”

Iruka snorts a laugh at that. “It did, yes. Not in a good way.”

Kakashi simply nods in agreement, his brief foray into Hell still fresh in his mind. His first time passing the metaphysical gates that he’d sent many to face. He can’t be sick, not really, but even thinking about that place twists his insides so that he thinks he might actually be. And thinking about Iruka in that place is even worse. (He finally understands why he had been so desperate when he first suggested the deal to Kakashi, all those millennia ago. Anything to stay out of that place, even setting himself as an opponent to the Angel of Death himself.)

“So what now?” Iruka seats himself on the edge of the bed. 

It’s a good question. Kakashi crosses the room to sit next to him. Everything has changed now. The Apocalypse happened and Naruto had un-happened it. He and Iruka had fought and left each other and come back together.

But...at the same time, nothing really has. 

They are here, in this small house on the edge of town where they have been for the past thirteen years. The same small, loud child charging around recklessly downstairs.

The only thing missing is the tension.

The tension that arose with every whispered argument about what to do with the antichrist-to-be under the roof with them. Every time they threw the words “angel” and “demon” in each other’s faces.

Every time Iruka miracled Kakashi’s clothes clean and every time Kakashi cooked dinner for the three of them, Naruto and dogs underfoot. 

That tension has settled. Become something warm and comfortable and familiar. Like it was always there, just waiting for them to notice it. Inevitable. Ineffable.

“We finish raising Naruto,” he says, soft and slow, feeling bold enough to wrap an arm around Iruka’s shoulders in a way he has never quite dared before. He frees his wings, mantling over the both of them protectively. “And once he’s grown up...we do whatever we want.”

When Naruto bursts through the door an hour later with Kurama on his heels, to demand ramen, they are curled together on top of the bed, sharp silver feathers mingling with singed black on the pillows.


End file.
